Back in 2019, South Dakota governor Kristi Noem was mighty worried about industrial hemp, medical marijuana, and adult cannabis confusing law enforcement officers trying to do their jobs.
At the time, Bluestem posted about this dilemma in Editorial review: South Dakota should learn to walk & chew gum with regard to industrial hemp and Knowns & unknowns: SD Gov. Kristi Noem goes full-bore Donald Rumsfeld on industrial hemp.
Fortunately, Noem's worries hve proven to be baseless. At the Argus Leader, Joe Sneve reported Wednesday in Report: Fears whether hemp, CBD products would complicate drug laws haven't materialized in SD:
It turns out, South Dakota cops and prosecutors can tell the difference between CBD and marijuana after all.
Fears that hemp and hemp-based CBD products encountered in the field by law enforcement wouldn’t be distinguishable from mood-altering marijuana products was the go-to argument for public officials like Attorney General Jason Ravnsborg and Gov. Kristi Noem, who led a full court press in 2019 to successfully block the legalization of industrial hemp in South Dakota.
But more than a full year after the crop was legalized in the Mount Rushmore State – the Legislature passed the hemp bill in 2020 – the Attorney General’s Office says those concerns “have been resolved.”
“There was little effect on law enforcement’s ability to continue to prosecute illegal cases of marijuana and/or controlled substances,” Attorney General Jason Ravnsborg wrote in his 2021 Hemp Report, sent this week to the South Dakota Legislature and the governor’s office. . . .
Well, I'll be a blue-nosed gopher. Next thing folks will be telling me is that voters understood what we were voting for in Amendment A and it was all about the single-subject of the cannabis plant.
Related posts:
- After court defeat, South Dakotans for Better Marijuana Laws keeps working for adult cannabis
- South Dakota governor signs industrial hemp bill
- Noem softens opposition to industrial hemp
- Will recreational pot be legal in South Dakota before farmers get to grow industrial hemp?
- Editorial review: South Dakota should learn to walk & chew gum with regard to industrial hemp
- Knowns & unknowns: SD Gov. Kristi Noem goes full-bore Donald Rumsfeld on industrial hemp
- Hemp: the weed with roots in Minnesota
- In 1937, industrial hemp was a thing in Winona, but reefer madness legislation killed the crop
Photo: Kristi Noem, the governor with Michele Bachmann eyes. Source Noem has hundreds of questions about industrial hemp. Photo credit:SD Gov/MGN via KOTA TV.
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